Tiamat, the Aircraft Commander
What was our Icarus up to, you ask…
"I GOT IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!!!!"
"Hweh?!"
For the first time since being isekai'd into this game, he was breakdancing in full-blown mania at the sight of a brand-new superhuman from the gacha.
"Ah, please calm down. He's just… extremely happy, that's all."
"I-Is that so?"
The newly summoned superhuman stammered, thoroughly rattled by the spectacle of me spinning on my head and throwing down B-boy moves — but Jessica, standing beside her, handled the situation with the ease of long practice, so there wasn't much for me to worry about.
Not that I had the bandwidth to worry about anything else right now, anyway.
This is sexy as hell.
Who could have guessed that running twenty-five Dimension Causal Fixing tickets at once would spit out a superhuman on the very first pull — and not just any superhuman, but our brand-new SSS-grade?
> Radiant Resource Crate x3
> Rare Resource Crate x1
> Common Resource Crate x20
Granted, the remaining twenty-four pulls were all resource crates — and twenty of those were Common Resource Crates, the kind that wouldn't even cover a single base building if you cracked them all open. But who cared about any of that?
I had just pulled a superhuman from the gacha for the first time — the absolute first time — in this entire game.
Hell yeeeeeeeah, oh my goooooood!
And not just any superhuman. Miraculously, she was exactly the commander-type I'd been desperately craving lately.
I finished my headspin, let the rush settle, then stood up and walked over to Tiamat, who was currently receiving headpats from Jessica, and offered a proper welcome.
"Welcome to the Astral Base. Truly. It's good to have you, Tiamat."
"R-Right. It's nice to meet you too, Commander."
"We'll do the full introductions back at the command center. Jessica?"
"Yes."
A short while later, we returned to the command center — not in a water-bear made from Canph this time, but in a perfectly ordinary automated trailer. I decided to introduce Tiamat to everyone at once, so I called them all in: Griyanaar, who had separated Canph from the water-bear; Rain, who could appear anywhere inside the base thanks to being fused with it; Ignis, Partia, and Pashtura, who had been resting after clearing their daily quests; and finally Belial and Marianne, who had been running drills to level the newly built Battlecruisers Four and Five along with the rest of the fleet.
Whatever shock my earlier antics had inflicted seemed to have worn off during the ride. Tiamat's expression was noticeably brighter now as she launched into a proper self-introduction — long hair cascading to her knees, vivid red horns catching the light, and a uniform of black, gold, and crimson cut to bare a generous expanse of chest. Her eyes, the same brilliant red as her horns, sparkled as she spoke.
"Ahem. Allow me to introduce myself again, Commander."
"Mm."
"My name is Tiamat. Air traffic control, carrier aircraft, drones — leave any of it to me."
"Woooow!"
"A newbie, huh? Nice to meet you."
"A commander type? At last — someone of the same classification as myself."
The moment I heard "air traffic control" and "carrier aircraft and drone command" come out of her mouth, my head nodded on pure instinct. This was a genuine jackpot.
A fleet commander — no, an aircraft commander… hell yeah!
Of course, taking a character's self-introduction at face value was a great way to get sucker-punched, so while Tiamat fell into cheerful girls' talk with the other superhumans and Jessica kept the conversation from derailing, I quietly pulled up her status window to verify.
Aircraft buffs were delicious, after all.
The moment I actually looked at Tiamat's stats, though, a flicker of doubt crept in.
What the hell.
How to put this. Magic Power — which governed intelligence — and Magic Defense — which handled everything biochemical outside of raw physical damage — both carried the SSS tag befitting her grade. Everything else, though, sat at a middling A-grade level at best.
Her trait did list "Air Traffic Control," matching her introduction… but why did someone who operated aircraft have a Large-Scale Close-Range type stamped on her?
…And as that reaction probably made clear, I had never seen this Tiamat character before in my entire time playing this game.
Waaah, help me, Wikiemon!
Following the iron law of the internet — if you don't know, search first — I immediately opened the gallery's wiki tab. I did have to waste a few minutes deleting a flood of aggro bait posts full of disgusting images that had piled up, but once that was done…
The others, still mid-girls'-talk, offered to show the newcomer around the base and led Tiamat off, her devil's tail swaying as she went.
The armband is free now. The masters didn't dump any shitposts on me.
Feeling liberated, like a house-elf finally granted its freedom, I found the wiki entry covering Tiamat's lore and performance and started reading.
[Tiamat Official Art], [Tiamat facepalm art — smirking / airhead expressions]
A rare character who provides aircraft-related buffs.
Released roughly 2 years and 10 months before possession day.
Looks-wise, she gives off either Belial's hardass FM officer vibe or a sultry succubus vibe.
Her actual personality, though, got slapped with the then-trendy "looks cool, total airhead" trait, so in daily life she's just kind of a mess.
Stick her next to Belial or Asmodeus and she looks like a surplus high-school girl, fr.
But the second combat starts, she's a completely different person.
Even her speech pattern changes.
That said, any normal interaction with you or the other girls still brings the airhead energy right back out, so theories about her being dual-personality floated around a lot.
Anyway, that's the lore. How's the actual performance?
[Tiamat Specs Verification Shot]
As you can see, outside of Magic Power (intelligence) and Magic Defense, the rest of her stats are pretty trash.
She's labeled Large-Scale Close-Range with numbers like these, so if you throw her into solo combat like the two characters mentioned above, she gets shredded.
She also doesn't buff ships, so she's useless in a standard fleet brawl.
I spent a while wondering how the hell you were even supposed to use her…
She's classified as a combat character, but the correct way to run her is exclusively by parking her on a ship for battle.
More precisely: you need carrier aircraft launching from a carrier or other ships in a real fleet engagement.
If you've got carrier aircraft and a drone swarm, Tiamat slaps a mass command buff on the whole lot and their performance skyrockets.
She especially jacks up the two stats that matter most for aircraft — evasion and accuracy — so if you pit a fleet with Tiamat against one without her in an air battle, expect the other side's aircraft to get shredded about 30% harder.
And one last thing, if this even counts as a performance note:
You know those weirdos who look at the horns on her head and treat them like handles for… creative play?
Lore-wise, those horns are antennae-slash-feelers that supply the command ability behind her aircraft buffs.
The more units she's commanding, the more hypersensitive they get — so if you grab them wrong, you'll learn that Water Release techniques work just fine even without any water around.